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Sda/hda device recognition problem (Solved)

It's a long story but it goes something like this. I got BT3 installed on my HDD and there's no sound. A bunch of searching said to update the kernel and I worked on that. I never compiled a kernel before, but I didn't think it would be too hard. Looking at numerous guides it seemed pretty simple. There was only 1 small issue. I couldn't seem to find the previous config of BT on the HDD. There's no /usr/src/linux directory here. So I downloaded the kernel sources from BT Wiki and used the config from there. I proceeded as normal and edited Lilo to use the new kernel (2.6.24.3) and the old as a backup.

Problem: Kernel panic because could not mount. Detected partitions are recognized as HDA1 and HDA2, but the BT Live CD and HDD see it as SDA. Searching around suggests that I'm using the old device support (Legacy?) and need to enable Libata so it can change from hda > sda.

I tried enabling and disabling Legacy in the kernel, and I can't find Libata in it. Is the config just elsewhere on BT Live CD/HDD that I don't know of? I don't necessarily need this fixed, I just want sound enabled but nothing works (Installed latest ALSA). I think I want to solve this first so I know better when recompiling next time. Where to start?

BTW, I can't ask Lilo to run if any of the /dev/ are hda. I can append "root=/dev/hdax" but that failed as well.

ok typically "Unable to mount root fs on block device (x,y)" x=device number and y=partition number. I'm not sure exactly how much this will help you, but it could possible help you find out where exactly this is happening.

Above you had said you appended "root = etc...." and it did not work. Since you have not been able to boot in did you do this at the lilo screen, i.e. backtrack root=whatever? If you did it in the lilo.conf file when you changed the kernel source, did it throw any error when you ran lilo?

I had a similar kernel panic but my the situation it occured in was fairly different. I was installing to a sdhc card and i received "Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (x,y)". The problem for me was that there was not enough time given to detect the device. I'm not entirely confident that my solution will help you but its worth trying. in my lilo.conf file the root section appeared as
root = current
and i did not change that but I had to add
append="rootdelay=10"
to give it more time to detect the device.

Sorry I can't help with the config location, but I would definately be interested to hear where it is if you find out. Good luck!

Your post that included the link to danielroberts.org/doc/toshibalinux.html did the trick for me. I also got a kernel panic when I upgraded to the 2.6.25.9 kernel. I'm not 100% sure but I think if the kernel is recompiled to a new version then the kernel is looking for hda instead of sda which would mean that it is looking for an ide device instead of a sata device. This also solved my problem with my Dual layer DVD drive not having DMA turned on.

I didn't really need to recompile a new kernel but I've seen posts about the new iwl3945 drivers that can put your wireless card into monitor mode. It seems to have worked.